Dan Hodges is a former Labour Party and GMB trade union official, and has managed numerous independent political campaigns. He writes about Labour with tribal loyalty and without reservation. You can read Dan's recent work here

Dave and Ed's rhetoric over bank bonuses is as empty as the Occupy St Paul's tents

A sickener for him. But what a coup for the Prime Minister. They were raising a glass or two to Decisive Dave in my local last night, I can tell you. “Have you heard? Cam’s gone and blocked Stephen Hester’s million-quid bonus." “Really?” “Yeah. He’s only getting nine hundred grand now.” “Good old Dave. That’ll show ‘em”.

A triumph also for Ed Miliband. For months he’s been telling us how he’s driving Responsible Capitalism up the political agenda. And here it is, finally bearing fruit. It isn’t enough, of course. By the time you read this Ed will already have rushed out his press release decrying the tokenism of the Prime Minister’s gesture, and branding it an “insult” to hard-working families.

Quite right too. Under Labour bank bosses won’t earn a penny. Not a brass farthing. In fact, if they don’t watch their step, they’ll be paying us for the privilege of going to work at all.

Seriously. What the hell is going on here? Our Prime Minister leads a country that is at war. His nation’s economy is teetering on the brink of its first double-dip recession in 40 years, and is trapped in the eye of a financial storm without precedent. And yet we’re told that on those occasions he’s managed to tear himself away from Angry Birds he’s been spending time figuring out how to reduce a single bank employee's bonus by a couple of hundred thousand pounds. Is David Cameron the first minister of the crown, or RBS head of human resources?

The Leader of the Opposition has been just as bad. Since September, Ed Miliband has been promising to map out his vision for the New Economy. And now we know what it is: there will be naughty businesses, and there will be nice businesses. Stephen Hester will be on the minimum wage. And chocolate oranges will be banned.

The timing of this fast-moving "Hestergate" scandal is, almost literally, priceless. The leading global economies are assembled at Davos for the world economic summit. On the agenda: how to bring a halt to the spreading economic contagion, and ensure there is no repeat of the calamitous crash of 2008.

There will be discussion of the chronic flaws of risk dispersion. The bonfire of regulation that lead to insane leverage ratios. The development of credit derivative packages so complex the executives of the corporations marketing them couldn’t even understand how they operated.

Then from the back of the hall a hand will be raised. “Yes, a contribution from our colleague from the UK.” “Thanks. I’m sorry. But when are we going to start talking about the real issue: Stephen Hester’s estate in Broughton Grange?”

Don’t get me wrong, I like a good scapegoating as much as the next guy. And banker bashing is certainly good politics, though I suspect Dave and Ed’s outrage will end up cancelling itself out.

But is this genuinely the best we can do? Our answer to a financial cataclysm that bankrupted entire nations and ushered in decades of austerity is to take a few shares off Stephen Hester and tell Fred Goodwin he can’t have the letters s, i and r on his cheque book.

I’ve spent the last few months tearing chunks out of the kids camped outside St Paul's. Their tented village was a gesture. They didn’t really have a clue what they were protesting against, or what they were campaigning for. The encampment would change absolutely nothing.

But this morning, looking at the synthetic fury over Hester and his bonus, I’m thinking I may have done them a disservice. What we’re seeing from both David Cameron and Ed Miliband is, in effect, a glorified political sit-in. Tokenistic. Self-indulgent. Utterly irrelevant to the real issues thrown up by the banking collapse and economic tsunami that followed.

If we take away Hester’s bonus, and Goodwin’s knighthood, how many jobs will it create? How many families will be lifted out of poverty? What will it do to address the systemic failings of the banking system, or the wider structural challenges facing the global economy?

In this age of unprecedented economic and social upheaval two certainties remain. One is the moment of crisis will eventually pass. The other is that it will happen all over again. And when that day comes we will have Stephen Hester and Fred Goodwin to remind us why.